Seneca Valley Plans New Secure Entrances for Schools

Sure, staff controls the locked doors at , but visitors still have to travel through a few hallways before entering the main office, giving them easy access to the rest of the school.

“Now, after you hit the intercom, you walk into that school and, unless you go straight to the office like we tell you to do, you could very quickly gain access to the library. You could quickly gain access to the cafeteria or to the gymnasium,” said Assistant Superintendent Dr. Jeff Fuller.

In the future, visitors will have no choice but to report directly to the office.

Captured entrances are planned for the middle school and for , , the , , and the . , Connoquenessing Valley and elementary schools already have captured entrances in place.

“The captured entrances are a way to positively control the access to the general student population for visitors,” Fuller said.

Fuller explained that with a captured entrance, visitors to the school would open a first set of doors that gives them access to a lobby. They wouldn’t be allowed to enter a second set of locked doors, which lead into the main body of the school, until they complete a face-to-face check-in procedure with staff members.

Once their identification is scanned, visitors would be given a badge with their photo, said Fuller. Only then would they be allowed to enter the second set of doors.

Last summer, the district applied for a Community Oriented Policing Services grant through the U.S. Department of Justice. The program funds schools for as much as half of the cost to implement safety measures.

Seneca Valley received $165,000 from the program, and the funding was targeted for the captured entrances, a digital camera system for the district’s 102 buses, an emergency call system for administrators and a visitor screening technology system that mines a database to make sure those entering the schools aren’t registered sex offenders. The Raptor-brand screening system was installed in all the schools.

Fuller said the Raptor and the emergency call systems already are in place. The video cameras for the buses also have been ordered. Fuller said A.J. Myers & Sons, the busing company that has a contract with the school, would provide some funding for the cameras.

In a 7-2 vote at Monday’s school board meeting, officials agreed to start the bidding process for the captured entrances at the senior high, the intermediate school and the middle schools.

The board already approved earlier in the year the solicitation of bids for the entrances at the elementary schools. When those bids came in lower than expected at about $40,000, the district asked to use the grant money for captured entrances at the secondary schools as well, said Fuller.

He estimated the cost of adding the entrances to the middle, intermediate and senior high schools at $70,000, making the total cost for all schools about $110,000.

"The grant will pay for half of each of the projects that we wrote the grant for," Fuller said.

Board members Joseph Scalamogna and Eric DiTullio voted against approving the bid process for the secondary schools at Monday’s meeting.

After DiTullio questioned what would happen to the grant money if the district decided against the entrances, Superintendent Dr. Donald J. Tylinski said the funding would be returned to the  Justice Department.

Linda Andreassi, the district’s director of communications, said that any time a grant is returned, the agencies look poorly on the entities that return them.

“We would struggle for future opportunities to receive a grant from that office,” Tylinski said.

The district has until August 2012 to use the money, said Fuller.

Board Vice President Jason Wehrle voiced strong support for the entrances.

“Every day I send my kid to school on a leap of faith that she'll be safe at school; anything to increase what is of fundamental importance,” he said at Monday’s meeting.

The district will pay for the safety measures using $1.25 million in bond money earmarked for capital improvement projects. Originally, that included a new media box at NexTier Stadium, but it was removed from the table at the

Officials have said the bond money must be used for capital improvements and cannot be used to augment the district's operating budget.

Fuller said he hoped to start construction on the entrances as soon as school lets out for the summer in June. The project should be completed before students return to the classrooms in the fall.